Shrove Tuesday having played these parts aforesaid, doth Exit, and next day Lent begins to enter, who is entertained by a grave, formal, reverend statesman, called civil policy: but you must understand that Lent would very feign take up his lodging here with religion, but religion will not be acquainted with him, and therefore civil policy hath the managing of the business. But it is a wonder to see what munition and artillery the epicures, and cannibal flesh eaters do provide to oppose Lent, and keep him out at the staff's end, as whole barrels of powdered beef blow him up, tubs of pork to pistol and shoot him through with his kindred hunger, famine, and desolation, barricadoes of bacon, as strong and impregnable bulwarks against invasive battery. Which civil policy perceiving, causeth proclamations straight to be published for the establishing of Lent's government, but then to see how the butchers (like silenced schismatics) are dispersed, some riding into the country to buy oxen, kine, calves, sheep and lambs, leaving their wives, men and maids, to make provision of pricks' for the whole year in their absence some again of the inferior sort do scout into stables, privies, cellars. Sir Francis Drake's ship at Deptford, my Lord Mayor's barge, and divers secret and unsuspected places, and there they

'PRICKS.-Skewers.

make private shambles with kill-calf cruelty, and sheep slaughtering murder, to the abuse of Lent, the deceiving of the informers, and the great grief of every zealous fishmonger.

For indeed Lent in his own nature is no bloodsucker, nor cannot endure any blood-shed; and it is his intent, that the bull, the ox, the ram, the goat, the buck, or any other beast, should be free to live in any corporation without molestation: it is Lent's intent, that the innocent lamb, and Essex calf, should survive to wear the crest of their ancestors: that the goose, the buzzard, the widgeon, and the woodcock, may walk fearless in any market town, cheek by jole with a headborough, or a tithingman.

The cut-throats butchers, wanting throats to cut,
At Lent's approach their bloody shambles shut :
For forty days their tyranny doth cease,

And men and beasts take truce and live in peace :
The cow, the sow, the ewe may safely feed,
And low, grunt, bleat, and fructify and breed,
Cocks, hens, and capons, turkey, goose, and

widgeon,

Hares, conies, pheasant, partridge, plover, pigeon,
All these are from the break-neck poulterer's paws
Secured by Lent, and guarded by the laws,
The goring spits are hanged for fleshly sticking,
And then cook's fingers are not worth the licking.

But to recount the numberless army that Lent doth conduct, the great munition and artillery that he hath to withstand those that gainstand him, his weapons of offence and defence, and variety of hostile accoutrements that his host is armed withal : if I should write all these things, my memory must be boundless, because my work would be endless. First, marches Sir Laurence Ling, with his Regiment, an ancient sea-faring gentleman: next follows Colonel Cod, oftentimes bleeding fresh in the battle: then comes captain Stock-fish, a well beaten soldier, and one that is often proved to endure much; Sir Salmon Salt, in a pitiful pickle valiantly abides the conflict, and Gilbert Gubbins' all to tatters like a ragged soldier many times pieces out a broken supper. The majestical king of fishes, heroical most magnificent Herring, armed with white and red, keeps his court in all this hurly-burly, not like a tyrannical tear-throat in open arms, but like wise Diogenes in a barrel, where if any of his Regiments either do or take injury, though he want the sword of justice, yet he hath the scales, which I imagine he carries not for nought. The great Lord Treasurer to this mighty prince (old Oliver Cob) is very inward with him, and knows more of his secrets than all his privy council besides: and when his hard-roed master means to shew himself in his red bloody

'GUBBIN. The parings of haberdine. Also any kind of fragments.

colours, then in fury he associates himself with two notorious rebels, Jack Straw, and Jack Cade,' who do encompass him round, and beleager him on each side, guarding his person from the fury of wind and weather.

3

The wet fishmongers all this while (like so many executioners) unkennel the salt eels from their briny ambuscadoes, and with marshal law hang them up: the stock-fish having tried a terrible action of battery is condemned to be drowned, the Ling, Haberdine, Green-fish, and Coal-fish, are drawn and quartered into poles, backs, and tails, and (like rebels in Ireland) hanged with a withe: nay the king of fishes himself cannot escape, but is tyrannically broiled upon a gridiron. Then comes JackSauce with a spoon creeping out of a mustard pot, armed in a pewter saucer, a desperate fellow, and one that dares take Davy Ap Diggon, or Shen Ap Morgan, by the nose, and many times (with the spirit of Tewkesbury) he will make a man weep being most merry, and take the matter in snuff being well pleased.

The whiting, rochet," gournet, and the mop,"
The skate and thornback, in the net doth drop:
The pied-coat mackerel, pilchard, sprat and sole,
To serve great Jack-a-Lent amain do troll.

cod.

1CADE.-A barrel or cask. A cade of herrings, 500. "GREENFISH, the 'COAL-FISH.-A species of cod; gadus carbonarius, thus named from the colour of its back. "WITHE.-A willow twig. ROCHET.-Roach. MOP.-A young whiting..

In the rearward comes Captain Crab, Lieutenant Lobster, (whose catching claws always puts me in mind of a sergeant) the blushing prawn, the well-armed oyster, the escalop, the welk, the mussle, cockle, and periwinkle, these are hot shots, venereal provocators, fishy in substance, and fleshly in operation. The poor anchovy is pitifully peppered in the fight, whilst the sturgeon is kegged, randed, and joled about the ears, and in conclusion, without dissembling eaten with fennel the emblem of flattery but the anchovy is oftentimes revenged upon his eaters, for being devoured raw, he broils. in their stomachs so hotly, that before the heat be quenched the eaters are drenched in the blood of Bacchus, sack and, claret, that though a man be as wise as a constable at his entrance, his wit sometimes is so shrunk in the wetting, that he may want the understanding of an ass.

Then there are a crew of near bred freshwater soldiers, our Thamesisians, our comrades of Barking our eastern, and western river-rovers, these youths are brought and caught by whole shoals, for indeed they are no fighters, but mere white-livered, heartless runaways, like the Turk's asapye (sic), that if the fishermen (like diligent catchpoles) did not watch narrowly to catch them by hook and by crook, by line and leasure, Lent might gape for gudgeons, roach, and dace, where it not for these netmongers, it is no flat